In the News

Every morning, Richie goes out to our driveway and brings in the newspapers.   There are two reasons he goes out for the papers - I refuse to be seen outside the house without full make-up and two it is a male thing to want to make sure his street is sill okay - no sinkholes, fallen electric poles - guy stuff.   

This morning he dumped the LA Times on the dining room table and said, "Barbara Sinatra died, age 90" and I, thumbing through the front section of the Daily Breeze, said, "Serves her right."

As my grandmother would have said, "No better than she should be."  Using Frank's money, she established herself as a major charitable donations person in Palm Springs.  She knew PS well, having spent most of her marriage with second husband Zeppo Marx there. 

A former beauty queen and drum majorette in an annual parade at the Springs, she spent 13 years chasing Frank Sinatra. Once she divorced Zeppo and bagged Frank, she wheedled for Frank to adopt her son Bobby from her first marriage.  More of an inheritance that way ...(Sinatra refused.)

She kept Frank out on the road far longer than he should have been solely for the money and was quoted once as telling him that she needed money for such-and-such charity so go out on the road and do some concerts and she would get half of the money.  She was a pip all right. 

But I think her most egregarious insult was titling her biography "Lady Blue Eyes."  Elevating herself to ladyhood when the title should have been gold digger ... didn't go down well with me.  "Lady" my sweet patootie. 

I was cheered though, deep in the Letters section to read this: 

End of Gov. Brown's term can't come soon enough *

Professional politician Gov. Jerry Brown, 79, has been in politics for 48 years less a six-year hiatus during which he studied Buddhism in Japan and helped out at one of Mother Teresa's hospitals. 

Forty-two years of government funding, housing and perks.  Maybe it's someone else's turn at the trough.
     Nina Murphy, Redondo Beach

* Letters to the Editor are always given a title by an editor at the newspaper.  I did not write that headline although I must say I agree with it wholeheartedly.